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Stephen Covey, fully Stephen Richards Covey

American Author, Educator, Businessman, Trainer, Motivational Speaker best known for his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Author Quotes

We are limited but we can push back the borders of our limitations

We live in a culture of blame ? a full 70 percent of respondents say that people in their organization tend to blame others when things go wrong. So taking responsibility will mean swimming against the current.

We are more in need of a vision or destination and a compass and less in need of a road map.

We live in a Knowledge Worker Age but operate our organizations in a controlling Industrial Age model that absolutely suppresses the release of human potential. Voice is essentially irrelevant.

We are not our feelings. We are not our moods. We are not even our thoughts. The very fact that we can think about these things separates us from them and from the animal world. Self-awareness enables us to stand apart and examine even the way we see ourselves?our self-paradigm, the most fundamental paradigm of effectiveness. It affects not only our attitudes and behaviors, but also how we see other people. It becomes our map of the basic nature of

We may be very busy, we may be very efficient, but we will also be truly effective only when we begin with the end in mind.

Until a person can say deeply and honestly, ?I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday,? that person cannot say, ?I choose otherwise.?

We are responsible for our own effectiveness, for our own happiness, and ultimately? for most of our circumstances.

We must look at the lens through which we see the world, as well as at the world we see, and understand that the lens itself shapes how we interpret the world.

Until we take how we see ourselves (and how we see others) into account, we will be unable to understand how others see and feel about themselves and their world. Unaware, we will project our intentions on their behavior and call ourselves objective.

We are responsible for our own lives.

We must never be too busy to take time to sharpen the saw.

Value the differences.

We become what we repeatedly do.

We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.

Vision is applied imagination.

We can make a promise and keep it. Or we can set a goal and work to achieve it.

To do carefully and constantly and kindly many little things is not a little thing.

Treat them all the same by treating them differently? respecting their differences.

To focus on money making as a center will bring about its own undoing.

True discipline means channeling our best hours into first-order objectives, and that means being a nonconformist in the best sense.

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.

To focus on technique is like cramming your way through school. You sometimes get by, perhaps even get good grades, but if you don't pay the price day in and day out, you'll never achieve true mastery of the subjects you study or develop an educated mind.

True effectiveness is a function of two things: what is produced (the golden eggs) and the producing asset (the goose).

Think about a person who typically sees things differently than you do. Consider ways in which those differences might be used as stepping-stones to third alternative solutions. Perhaps you could seek out his or her views on a current project or problem, valuing the different views you are likely to hear.